Re: Thoughts on droplets Ben Laurie (ben@algroup.co.uk)
Tue, 02 Nov 1999 22:50:12 +0000

shapj@us.ibm.com wrote:
>
> > That was the obvious answer. But how do you protect the private key from
> > abuse?
>
> That's what the tamper-proof hardware is for. I'm missing something.

What you are missing (or I am) is that you neglected to mention that tamper-proof hardware was involved (or I missed you mentioning it). Clearly its trivial to trust software that runs on tamper-proof hardware.

Ah, right. I remember now. We were talking about trusting a _remote_ system. How do we ascertain that it is, in fact, running on tamper-proof hardware? Or are you going to say that the software is burnt into the tamper-proof hardware, and therefore cannot run on anything else, and hence all we need to do is verify that the software is the software we think it is (and make sure no-one ever manages to get an image [oops, major security hole here])?

Cheers,

Ben.

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